Doing More with the Same Time

As the mom of a toddler, I’m always looking for ways to get more done in the day. There is just never enough time to complete everything on my to do list, and also spend some time on what I love. And it feels like my writing is always what gets put on the back burner.

In an attempt to try and find more time for the things I want to accomplish, I started tracking how I spent my time. I hoped by tracking how I use my free hours of the day, I might be able to figure out where I could find space that might have been overlooked. Or where I was wasting too much time. If I wanted to find more time in the day, it only made sense to me that I would first have to determine where my time was going.

But when I started tracking my time I noticed a few interesting things. Not in how I use my time (though the amount of time I spend scrolling YouTube and Instagram is a little scary) but how the act of tracking my activities changed my behavior. 

First, I noticed just by tracking my time that I spent less doing things that I viewed as unnecessary (watching tv, scrolling Instagram, messaging with family and friends, etc…). Once I started writing down where I spent my time, and thereby forced myself to be accountable for what I was doing, that was a deterrent in itself. I didn’t want to have to write down that I spent the last half hour scrolling social media with nothing to show for it, so before the half hour was up I would try to find at least one productive thing I could accomplish. Giving me another label to assign that half hour. This gave me a built-in motivation to do more, without having to apply any other techniques or willpower.

The other change I noticed was that simple act of tracking my time forced me to see every minute as valuable.

For simplicity, I classified each half hour under one of four designations. Work, Writing, Promotion, and Personal.

Once I designated a half hour to any of these labels, my analyst brain told me I had to use that whole half hour for activities related to that category. For the purposes of data integrity. The process of tracking time is cumbersome enough, I didn’t need to add tracking fractions to the process.

If I finished a task before the end of the half hour, I would naturally try to find another task to do in that same classification for the remaining time. If I finished the dishes with ten minutes left in my half hour block, I would look around for what else I could do to fill that time. Could I take out the trash, clean the toilet, pack my son’s snacks for daycare, etc... in those ten remaining minutes, thereby forcing myself to use every available minute in that half hour. And by doing this every half hour, by the end of the day, I had found I had packed much more into the same amount of time.

Even if it meant small movements. Even if I only had three minutes, that might be enough to put the books I’d been planning to donate into the trunk of my car. Which gets me one step closer to getting them to their end destination. If I’d finished writing a blog with five minutes to spare, I could use that five minutes to brainstorm new ideas or find pictures to accompany a future blog. This small trick encouraged me to use every available moment, and helping me get even more done in the same amount of time. Inching me closer to my goals.

I’m not sure if this tip would work for everyone. Maybe it’s just a trick of my crazy brain. A side effect of years spent analyzing data, and focusing on creating like comparison. But for any others out there, looking for ways to make more out of the precious time we have, maybe it would work for you too.

If you are struggling to get it all done, to figure how you can get more done in the same limited amount of time, consider tracking what you do with your time each day. This might help you see where you are missing time, or where your processes can be improved. But you might also gain the ability to push yourself to do more in the time you have, to make every minute count, just from the simple act of tracking how you spend your time. Just as I have.